(Photo by Austin Curtis / Unsplash)
Sandhya still thinks about that day 15 years ago, when heavy monsoon rain had flooded the streets of Kolkata, leaving her stranded as she tried to bring her two children home from school. As the rainfall intensified, her distress grew: How long would they be trapped there? How would she get home? What if her children fell sick?
Then Sandhya — not her real name — saw an autorickshaw driver from her neighborhood, whose vehicle she had traveled upon several times. Desperate, she hailed him. The driver recognized her and slowed down. Though he had been on a personal trip, the driver agreed to ferry them home.
More than a decade has passed since that day. But when I interviewed Sandhya, she still registered her heartfelt appreciation that the autorickshaw operator had driven them to their doorstep and refused to take the extra money she offered him.
For women, commuting in Indian cities usually means enduring more than just the usual inconveniences of public transit. During a recent survey covering several cities across India, as many as 56% of women said they regularly face sexual harassment on public transport. Autorickshaw drivers are aggressive; male co-passengers on buses and subways grope women commuters; taxi drivers masturbate while ferrying customers; waiting at train and bus stations can leave women vulnerable to abuse. Newspaper reports are rife with incidents of violence against women on the move. The women I am friends with tell me it is a rare day when they are not assaulted or intimidated by men on city streets.
Does it matter to men that women face such enormous hostility in cities? To find out, I spent time hanging out and speaking with autorickshaw- and taxi drivers and traffic police in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.
Most drivers – all of whom are men and working-class – seemed keenly aware of sexual harassment on public transport and quite willing to believe women. Autorickshaw drivers told me, for instance, that if women don’t feel safe in their vehicles, they will avoid traveling by them. This would in turn harm their business; how then would drivers feed their families?
Drivers told me that they also felt an urgency to protect women commuters because – as someone’s sister, daughter or wife – they are deserving of respect. I learned that over time, many autorickshaw drivers come to recognize male passengers who routinely harass women commuters and refuse to accept their business. They create a culture of shaming perpetrators by telling other drivers to watch out for specific male passengers. Such attitudes help made autorickshaws a bit more safe for women.
That’s not because of a moral belief that women have a right to the city; rather, women are defended because of commercial interests and to safeguard family honor.
In the media, violence against women in public spaces is framed in a particular way. Often, it is portrayed as a clash of values between “Westernized” middle-class women and rural migrant men who feel diminished by urban Indian femininity. My conversations with taxi drivers – most of whom are migrants from poor villages in the country – captured a very different moral universe.
Several migrant taxi drivers told me that they are sexually indifferent to urban women because if tales of their misdemeanor traveled back home to their villages, their parents will commit suicide out of shame. Many taxi drivers consider their vehicles to be sacred because it is the cab that allows them to earn enough and sustain their families in their villages. For them, when taxi drivers assault women or behave in lewd ways, they defile the noble purpose of cab driving: being responsible family men. The taxi becomes a safe space for women not because of their right to their bodies, to refuse sex without explanation, but because male breadwinning is a revered task.
When we consider strategies for building better cities, we typically focus on urban public spaces. We assume that the solution for problems such as sexual violence and unequal access lies in an urban design that is aware of social inequalities. We think of improved streetlights, better signage, functioning toilets and waiting rooms; we think of free public transport for women. These are all important interventions.
And yet, the solution to gender-based violence in cities may only partially lie in better urban planning. To create cities that allow women to flourish, the institution of the family and gender roles within it will also need to be radically changed.
A recent study found that in India, women between the ages of 25-44 spend some eight hours everyday day on household work; meanwhile, men in the same age group spend less than an hour on domestic chores. While 88% of men in this age group reported stepping outdoors, as little as 38% of women said they go out of their homes.
My research with male transport workers shows that men’s reactions to women in cities are largely determined by men’s attitudes towards family life. In patriarchal societies, men’s social prestige is firmly tied to providing for their families, to marriage, to protecting their wives and children from the harshness of the world outside. The family binds men and women to traditional forms of masculinity and femininity, which has far-reaching impacts on city life.
I think of Sandhya, who was struggling to return home with her children in terrible weather and was helped by a thoughtful male transport worker. Such stories of the kindness of strangers are heartwarming and add value to our urban lives.
But if support is volunteered to women only when they are identified as mothers, sisters, daughters and wives, this makes cities inhospitable for women when they don’t perform these roles — or don’t perform them to men’s standards. What about the elderly woman who never married, relocated to a new city later in life and lives with a flatmate? What about the nonbinary couple that enjoys taking late-night walks in the neighborhood? Do they not have a right to urban resources, to find joy in city living?
So long as the city is seen as the place for men to become successful breadwinners, women’s presence in the urban outdoors will continue to be read as an anomaly. Only those women who are seen as deserving of protection will be guarded; anyone who goes against societal expectations will forever be vulnerable to male rage.
To ensure that women can enjoy the many pleasures of city life without the threat of violence, better urban design is important. But we must also change the structure of families. If men continue to make sense of urban life through traditional gender roles in the family, the city will remain a dangerous place for women and nonbinary people.